I nodded again, and got out of the booth. Vera looked at me like a greedy child who wanted a pony.
“Come along,” I sighed.
Frank and Ava were at a booth near the kitchen—not really such a good seat, but out of the way. I didn’t know Ava very well—only that, beautiful as she was, she was a hard-nosed broad with a vicious streak.
“Nate!” Frank said, bolting to his feet; he stuck out his hand, which I took.
He looked skinnier than ever, sporting a Clark Gable mustache that was wrong for him. He swam in a tan gabardine sportcoat and a yellow shirt with an open collar; he wasn’t wearing a rug and his thinning hair made him look old for his thirty-five years. Next to him, in a foul mood that rose from her like heat off asphalt, sat Ava; she was smoking a cigarette and her makeup seemed heavy to me, though she was unquestionably lovely, her attire simple but striking: an orange blouse with a mandarin collar.
I said, “Hiya, Frank. Ava.”
The actress looked away.
Frank said, “Have you been ducking me, Melvin?”
He was calling everybody Melvin that year.
“No. Uh, this is Vera Palmer. She’s a client.”
Frank beamed at the girl and extended his hand. “Pleasure, Miss Palmer.”
Ava stamped out her cigarette on the tablecloth and said in her husky alto, “I suppose you’re sleeping with this broad!”
Frank looked at her, aghast. “What? I just met her! Are you crazy?”
“I must be,” Ava said, and scooted out of the booth, grabbing her wrap, and then stormed out through the restaurant, brushing Vera roughly aside.
“Excuse me,” Frank said, and followed her.
Vera looked at me as though she’d been poleaxed.
I shrugged. “That’s pretty much par for the course with those two. Let’s go back to our booth.”
Which we did, and we were on our second cup of coffee (Fred was off schmoozing with other customers) when Frank—looking like a whipped puppy—came back in, spotted us, and joined us, sitting next to me.
“Jesus,” he said. “All I have to do is look at a pretty girl, and bam, Ava and me, we’re off to the races.”
I didn’t say anything. I was irritated with him; we’d known each other a long time, and I knew he was a tomcat, but I didn’t think he’d ever leave Nancy and the kids. And after what I’d been through myself, I wasn’t too keen on cheaters.
“I can’t stay,” Frank said, “but I’ll be in Chicago next week, at the Chez Paree. Are you heading back, by any chance?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.”
“Well, either way, we need to talk. Listen, Melvin, I’m in a world of shit. This guy Miller at Columbia has me making novelty records, trying to compete with Frankie the fuck Laine, for Christ’s sake. Then I managed to piss Mayer off and lost my movie contract. I do have a TV series coming up—CBS. That’s a good thing.”
“That’s a very good thing, Frank. TV’s the hot deal, these days.”
“Yeah, and those lousy Senate hearings are all over it! That’s what’s really got me in a vise. The feds…these fucking feds…. Excuse me, Miss Palmer.”
Vera was gaping at him like she was a tourist and he was the Grand Canyon. “That’s all right, Mr. Sinatra.”
“Fucking feds,” he continued, “they’re squeezing me like a goddamn pimple.”
“How so?”
“That hick from Tennessee wants me to talk about Charley and Joey and the boys.”
The “boys” he referred to were mobsters, mostly from Chicago—like Charley, Joey, and Rocco Fischetti, Capone cousins who were high in the Outfit.
“I’ve been ducking that bastard Kefauver myself,” I admitted.
Frank was lighting up a cigarette. “Yeah, but at least you don’t have that cheese-eating Red-baiter on your butt.”
“What, McCarthy?”
He smirked. “Yeah, I’m not just a gangster, you know— I’m a Red!”
“McCarthy thinks all Democrats are communists.”
Sinatra’s fabled blue eyes locked onto me. “You
“Some. I did a job for Drew Pearson involving McCarthy, and got to know the guy.”
Pearson was a nationally known muckraking syndicated columnist I’d handled occasional investigations for over the years: Senator McCarthy had been a source of his I’d checked.
Sinatra’s eyebrows climbed his forehead. “So you’re friendly with McCarthy?”
“Friendly enough to drink with.”
